| Americans Must Criticize Our Corrupt Courts By Carson Holloway
In the wake of his conviction in a New York court, President Trump has complained that the process was rigged against him, that the whole proceeding was a corrupt effort to persecute him with a view to influencing the 2024 presidential election. In response, many of his opponents have criticized him for undermining public confidence in our system of criminal justice and thus harming our democracy—a criticism that has been magnified by many in the media.
These critics, however, are missing the point and undermining a principle that is in fact essential to preserving our republic: namely, that criticism of the justice system when it errs or overreaches is necessary to preserving freedom under the rule of law.
Those who founded our nation were aware of this necessity.
Alexander Hamilton, representing the defendant in the famous libel case People v. Croswell, warned that "the most dangerous, the most sure, the most fatal of tyrannies" operated "by selecting and sacrificing single individuals, under the mask and forms of law, by dependent and partial tribunals."
"Against such measures," Hamilton continued, "we ought to keep a vigilant eye and take a manly stand. Whenever they arise, we ought to resist, and resist till we have hurled the demagogues and tyrants from their imagined thrones." No sensible American would look back on these remarks and think that, by them, Hamilton was undermining democracy. | 
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